The Devil's Rejects

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Review: A gloriously wicked psychobilly thriller.

By Spence D.

Back in the early part of the new millennium Rob Zombie set out to shock the world and recapture the grungy horror aesthetic of '70s classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with House of 1,000 Corpses. Yet despite the hype, cult cachet, and controversy surrounding his cinematic debut, the film ended up being a well-intentioned, but poorly executed re-imagining of the Tobe Hooper's Southern fried mythology. Chockfull of erratic over-acting and a tag-along plot it was an extremely uneven film that felt more than a little forced. Perhaps Zombie's resources were stretched thin at the time. After all, during production he was also working on a new solo album, not to mention cranking out new material for the soundtrack. There was the summer long Ozzfest tour to contend with, as well. Amidst all of these commitments was the added stress of his film being mired in ongoing distribution woes.

Given the circumstances that may have attributed to House's disjointed feel it would have been somewhat natural for Devil's Rejects to have become nothing more than a bigger budget and better cast fueled rehash. Thankfully, Zombie eschewed any such notions and rather than delivering a pell-mell pastiche of drive-in movie clich&#Array;s, instead turned out a brilliant homage to the grit and verve of such films as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, Bonnie and Clyde, The Getaway, and even to a certain extent the loose and jocular glee of Smokey and the Bandit.

It would be all too easy to dismiss this film as a traditional entry in the slasher genre, but it's not. At its core this is a serial killer road trip epic from hell teeming with wickedly skewed humor, crisp, witty dialogue, and hilariously depraved irony. To grasp the full scope of the film it is necessary to look beyond the gore and vitiated scenarios of rape, insinuated incest, and serial killing. Once you do it becomes quite obvious that Zombie spent the past several years studying the lineage of '70s films from such masters as San Peckinpah, Arthur Penn, George Roy Hill, John Hough, and Hal Needham, just to name a few. The washed out visual tone of the film is a full-on tribute to the dusted amber tinge that many of the aforementioned auteurs favored during that time period. Even the two musical montages that bookend the film in the form of the opening credit sequence and the guns-a-blazing finale, owe a tremendous debt to Peckinpah for their integration of real time, slo-mo, and still photography to create a staccato rhythm of subdued intensity.

In more contemporary aspects, Zombie's film falls into the Post Modern Noir category inhabited by such films as David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs & Pulp Fiction. To put it all in context, if Blue Velvet is an acid-drenched art house fever dream then The Devil's Rejects is a gloriously wicked psychobilly thriller that unfolds like a crystal meth soaked drive-in movie nightmare.

Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding in The Devil's Rejects

Beyond the obvious visual nuances, the film works on an even deeper level, transcending the run-of-the-mill serial killer sub-genre thanks to intriguing characters and viciously barbed dialogue that reside at the heart of the film. Zombie may not exactly be the punchy pop culture pundit that Tarantino is, but he's a wonderfully deadpan redneck variation. Quotables ooze from the script like bubbling crude, their sharp wit treading the thin line of social acceptability with demented fervor, mixing references to Mark Twain, Star Wars, and politically incorrect nursery rhymes into biblical thematics and killing spree madness.

While Zombie's vim and vigor shines through in the dialogue, the words wouldn't pack nearly as much punch if it weren't for the actors delivering them. To his credit Zombie has pushed the Tarantino method of hiring long-forgotten B-movie actors to the next level, compiling an amazing cast that boils over with condensed energy. All the players ride the sharp edge of satire while teetering on the cusp of camp. And though they often come dangerously close to over-acting, they never pull a Humpty Dumpty. Instead they end up in a precarious balancing act that keeps the audience tense and unnerved.